My husband and I are reading TEAM OF RIVALS by Doris Kearns Goodwin--it's
about Lincoln's road to the White House and how, once he was elected, he
incorporated his rivals into his cabinet to serve as his advisors.
Several things have impressed me so far:
1) He self-studied the
law and was evidently brilliant at it. His initial foundation had been
the religious upbringing in his home, which is typical, but then he
approached the law through that lens. His father had been anti-slavery
and he understood the slavery question initially through the religious
lens.
2) But later, as a practicing lawyer, former congressman,
and a candidate for the Senate, he shifted his focus from religion to
law -- when Senator Seward of NY (a fellow Republican and very strong
anti-slavery person) so-called "slipped up" in a speech to argue that he
listened "to a higher law" in his advocacy for the end of slavery, he
was widely attacked. "What higher law?" people asked -- "Who is to say
what the 'higher law' or 'higher authority' is?" So Lincoln steered
clear of that argument about "higher law" and grounded his argument
against slavery in US law, namely the Constitution. Now, the
Constitution institutionalizes slavery -- but he studied that
constitution so thoroughly that he was able to make a solid argument
against slavery from the very words and articles within that
Constitution. The Abolitionists had BURNED the constitution, but
Lincoln used it.
Once he gave a 3-hour speech laying out his
thinking on the slavery question based entirely on his interpretation of
the constitution and subsequent federal and state laws. He was
evidently so eloquent and convincing that he changed minds and turned
heads. It was this advocacy against slavery -- an advocacy that did not
call for the immediate and total abolition of slavery, so in that way
wasn't "pure" like the arguments of the Abolitionists were -- that made
him such a strong and ultimately successful candidate for the Republican
nomination for President (the Republican party of the 1850s was a newly
developed, progressive party).
3) Where is someone, I asked
myself, TODAY who can make strong arguments from THE LAW? The law is
not religious, is supposed to be democratically arrived at, and is very
flawed. The saying "just because it's legal doesn't make it right" is
VERY TRUE.............but it is or could be or was, at least in
Lincoln's hands, a starting point for convincing arguments that turned
heads and changed minds.
4) My husband says I'm all wrong, that
the Constitution is a bourgeois document, has been variously
interpreted over the years, and puts the rights of the wealthy and
privileged before those of regular people, the environment, etc. He
says that what Lincoln did "was all rhetoric."
5). Well, what
about rhetoric, then? Technically I taught Rhetoric, and I'd not held
it in very high regard. But maybe that's the important piece that we're
missing today. Where is the RHETORIC based on shareable principles -- not
the rhetoric that "throws raw meat to the base," as we have in today's
politics, but the rhetoric that lays out solid arguments, brings people
along from step to step to see things more clearly or differently?
thoughtful rhetoric?
6) And on what basis do we do the thinking
and arguing? What's the baseline that we can agree on from which we
can eventually build agreement on right action?
7) My husband
suggests that the Gay Rights movement of the past few years is a
textbook case of the way rhetoric and law have been used successfully to
change peoples' thinking successfully. And that's been a slowly
developed movement, grass roots in many ways, basically non-violent
(although there has been violence against gays, that's for sure). And
step-by-step, the movement has moved towards CHANGING the laws,
defeating laws, and re-interpreting the Constitution, remaining secular
while helping religious people also to reinterpret their faith and their
faith documents, actually. There have been eloquent speakers and
regular people just talking to friends and family and telling their
stories. Gays have moved from being perceived as "the other," "the sinful," "the
outsiders" to being recognized as "us" -- as they always should have been, but as they
are being perceived as more and more.
8). Lots more thinking
needed on all that -- but what about international situations? What
baseline can we find when Muslims and Jews and Christians clash, for
example? When immigrants meet native peoples and share neither language
nor culture nor religion? It seems POSSIBLE that within individual
countries secular law can be that foundation or touchstone for starting
the conversation. But internationally beyond boundaries? What? I
think there may be nothing more important in our troubled world today
than the answer to these questions.
9). I consciously made the decision to leave the Christian church about 15 years ago -- but I see now that my thinking since that time has remained enamored and entrapped by the assumptions and parameters of the Christianity I'd known since birth. Now, with this recognition that the secular law can be a more powerful, more universal, more palatable realm within which humans can come together for perspective, agreement, and change, I feel that I've turned a corner. I hope for more insight to come......................Tamara
